Intensity
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Illya is upset by something Napoleon has said, so he disappears for a night on his own. He didn't expect to bump into Guido Panzini, the lovely vet from the Bow Wow Affair... Slash, rated 18.


'Illya, sometimes you're just a little _too_ intense.'

The words stung, and carried on stinging, more than he ever would have expected them to. He didn't cling. He didn't hang on Napoleon's arm. He didn't ask him to stay when he had a date with a woman to keep up appearances. He wasn't intense in that way.

But there was something there, something that had always been there through his life, at every age. _Illyukha, why are you staring? Why do you always stare at me? No, Illya, I don't want to talk about the big things today. Can't we talk about the weather? Illyusha, if I'm honest, sometimes you're just a bit – much. _

How could he help it? He never did things by halves. It wasn't in his nature. Napoleon's words brought back every memory of being told he was too much by so many people, and they stung.

He packed up his work quickly and quietly, put all the confidential papers back in the filing cabinets, and left the office while Napoleon was off down the corridor, probably flirting with the typing pool. He pulled on his long overcoat as he was passing out through the tailor's shop, and turned his collar up against the cold and the sleeting rain. He jiggled the loose change in his pocket as he walked. Cold as it was, he didn't feel like going home. He felt like going to that ridiculous bar in the Village and just spending some time below the radar.

_Sometimes you're just a little too intense_.

Was that a bad thing? Did they ever complain in the jazz club when he was entirely focussed on playing piano or cor anglais? Did Waverly ever complain when he was focussed so intensely on his mission? For that matter, did Napoleon complain when Illya was focussed enough to stop them both getting killed, when Napoleon was mooning over yet another pretty, ephemeral girl who would slip away like a butterfly at the end of the night?

He thought about lying with Napoleon after making love. That was the most perfect time. Just lying there, satiated, pressed against the body of the man he loved. It was so quiet and comforting to lie like that, feeling as though nothing in the world could ever intrude on their little bubble of perfection.

Still, his thoughts would move and turn and run on, and in the end he would become restless. While Napoleon would be quite willing to lie there for an hour or two, Illya would start to feel the burning need to be making something of his time. The soft quiet would start to be unbearable. He would fidget, and then Napoleon would say in a tone of suppressed disappointment, 'Why don't you go make coffee, Illya? We're done here, aren't we?'

So, sex would end in a feeling of pervasive disappointment. It had been so good, but at the end he had let Napoleon down again. He had failed to be a normal human being. He would go and make coffee, and while he was making coffee he would be thinking about the mission, noting things down on paper, thinking about the new physics journal he had waiting on the coffee table, thinking about trying to improve his fingering for that particularly tricky bit of Bach's BWV 54. How could he help that? It didn't seem fair for Napoleon to be upset about one of the things that he said made him love Illya all the more; his intelligence.

He had been lost again, walking along the street without even thinking about hailing a cab or ducking down into the subway or stepping on a bus. He had been alert for attacks, at least. That much was ingrained in him now. But he hadn't thought about doing anything but walking. His face was wet and cold from the freezing rain. His hands were in his pockets, but cold. The back of his neck ached from sitting at the desk all day. His head ached a little from reading all that text. It had been a long, hard day, and he felt like he needed alcohol.

He saw a subway entrance, and crossed the pavement to take the wet, dirty steps to the world below.

That helped his focus, at least. The confines of the underground world, the amount of people, the clamour of voices, the sounds of the trains rising up the steps from below. For a little while he concentrated only on getting his ticket, finding his line, and watching the crowds while he waited for the train to come in.

Everyone was bundled up warmly. Hard to tell if someone were sporting a concealed weapon under all those layers, but you could read a certain amount in people's faces. He didn't see anything, though, except cold, tired people waiting for their train, wanting to get home after a day at work on this bleak winter day.

The train came in, shrieking and rattling on the rails. A few people instinctively moved back. Most just stood there. Illya pushed himself into the crowd, got to the doors, and slipped in, pressed and jostled by all the other bodies trying to do exactly the same.

How mundane it was to be the same as everyone else. How boring. He felt a little moment of sickness in his craw, a little feeling of falling. It would be terrible to open his eyes one morning and find his life had all been a dream; that he was just another one of these awful commuters travelling to and from the office, going home, kicking off his shoes and shouting to the wife for coffee and the newspaper. He couldn't bear to live like that.

Maybe that was the fault of his intensity. Perhaps it was that which drove him on to a life which involved being out of the country as much as in it, hopping time zones, putting on disguises, slipping from language to language, carrying a gun and setting explosives with as much confidence as the average man had in his ability to read an insurance report or fire a sub-standard employee.

He shuddered a little. No one noticed his movement. They wouldn't think he was revolted at the idea of being like the masses around him. They'd just think he was cold.

Outside, the wet sleet had hardened into hail. It scattered down over the sleek road surfaces, pinged from the bodywork of cars, caused pedestrians to walk with their heads down, hoods up, sheltering their faces with a hand. A woman almost walked out in front of a car. Brakes screeched, a horn honked, the woman was jerked back by another lady in a dark red coat, and the obligatory little conversation about her near miss began.

Illya swerved past them and crossed the street on the walk sign. He took enough risks in his everyday life. Being killed on a dark winter's evening in a New York traffic accident would just be ridiculous. He'd stood in the dark of a Yugoslavian summer night and felt the fallout from one of his own explosions rain down on his head, so he didn't mind holding his head up and staying alert with something as benign as hail falling on him.

It was only a block's walk to the club, but he was freezing cold again by the time he walked in through the door. His coat had become damp through from the earlier sleet. In the heat of the subway any frozen remains had melted through the wool. The whole carriage had stunk of warm, wet bodies, and he had thought about what he knew of transport to the prison camps in his own country. Was that part of the intensity that Napoleon had complained about? That, standing holding onto a pole in the crowded subway car, he had found himself deeply immersed in the scenario of standing in one of the cattle transport wagons, facing the long, awful railway trip to a prison camp in one of the most inhospitable locations in his country?

Maybe that was it. Maybe that was his problem. He always thought things through to their furthest extremity. He was standing in a subway car one minute, then he was in an awful, crammed cattle wagon, swaying on the rails, pressed against the stinking bodies of men packed so close there was no room to even sit down. Here he was now, stepping down into the underground, smoky atmosphere of the club, and his mind had travelled back again to the subway, and back again to those transport trains.

He checked his coat, because they were good here in winter. They'd put it somewhere near a heater. By the time he was ready to leave the coat would be warm and dry. He still had his jacket on, gun concealed beneath it, communicator in the inside pocket.

He went to the bar, ordered a scotch, took the tumbler back to a free table, and sat down. There was a band on the little stage area playing some jazz he didn't recognise. It wasn't very good. Maybe it was their own composition. He could have got up there and taught the pianist a thing or two, but he didn't. He just sat with his drink, taking sips, feeling himself become a little more relaxed. After a while he ordered food, and he sat there picking at his fries, wishing they offered something a little less American on their menu. But he was in America, after all. He could hardly expect perogies in a place like this.

'_Caro mio_!'

He looked up, startled. A little warmth burst in him at that voice. Guido Panzini, dark wavy hair, thick-framed glasses, dark eyes and rich lips. They'd kissed once, both wearing their glasses, and the frames had knocked together. That had made them laugh, but they'd taken them off for sex. Gui was a surprisingly sweet, tender lover.

'What do you do here all alone, huh?' Guido asked him expressively, holding his arms apart.

Illya stood, unable to stop his smile being a little shy despite all they'd shared in the past. He was always like that at reunions. He accepted Guido's hug, inhaled the scent of him, cigarettes and hair oil and antiseptic, and by the time the Italian's strong arms had let him go all of the shyness had faded away. When Guido leant in to kiss his cheek he turned his face so that their lips touched. No one cared about that in this place. That was one of the reasons why he came here.

'Just came to see the band,' he shrugged as he sat again, and Guido laughed.

'Illya, my darling. You're a musician. Don't try to lie to me, to tell me you come here to hear this _cazzo_. You're a connoisseur, no? And you don't come for the food,' he added, picking up a limp fry, and biting off the end. His teeth were very white.

Illya smiled, then he laughed. 'Well, maybe I come for the drink. They can't get that wrong.'

'You order a _campari_ and then tell me they can't mess up the drinks.'

Guido sat, raised a hand to summon a waitress, and ordered a bottle of wine for the table. Illya felt a little self conscious over his neat scotch, then. The waitress brought two glasses with the bottle, and when Illya had downed his scotch he moved on to the wine.

'So, you've fought with your Napoleone, and you've come here to drown your sorrows,' Guido said perceptively. He shook his head before Illya could react. 'There's no point in saying no, _mio caro_. You are like the book, yes? Your pages are open.'

He didn't like that. He didn't mind it so much with Gui, but he didn't like the thought of strangers being able to read him. Maybe strangers couldn't. He'd shared enough with Gui.

'Well, not a fight,' he shrugged. 'Just – '

He wasn't sure how to verbalise it, so he shrugged again.

'Ah,' Guido said, as if he had put it all into words.

He took another of Illya's fries, and then a mouthful of wine. Illya didn't mind. He didn't have much interest in the fries himself. He picked up his burger and took a bite. They hadn't listened when he'd asked for no mustard. He drank some of his own wine instead. It was dry and cool, and took away the mustard taste.

'Come on, _piccolo_,' Gui said after a while.

The plate was almost empty, mostly because Guido had eaten almost all the fries. The bottle of wine had only a few drops left in the bottom. Illya felt warm and loose with the drink in him. He wasn't drunk, but he was softened. He shrugged and got to his feet. The music wasn't worth staying for. Gui slung an arm over Illya's shoulders, and he didn't shy away from the warm weight. They went to the cloakroom for their coats, and Illya's was warm and dry when he pushed his arms into the sleeves.

'I'll get you something from a street vendor,' Guido offered, and Illya shook his head.

'If they have any sense they'll've shut up by now,' he said. 'It's foul out there.'

They took a taxi back to Guido's place. When he unlocked his door the shrill barking began, and when it opened a small avalanche of white fluff was unleashed.

'You don't mind the _bambini_, no?' Guido asked him.

Illya didn't mind them, not so much. They were so far from the big wolf-like dogs that haunted his dreams on bad nights. One of the little dogs jumped up, scratching at his leg with its blunt claws, and he picked it up, holding it just far enough from his face so that it couldn't lick him. Guido was speaking to the dogs in Italian, telling them he would feed them soon; but not yet. Illya put his bundle of fluff down, and then Guido pressed against him amid the little tempest of canines, and raked his fingers through Illya's hair.

'You are beautiful when you pout, _vita mia_,' Guido told him, and he leant in to kiss Illya's lips.

Illya let his mouth fall open. Gui's hot tongue sought its way inside, tasting of wine and cigarettes. Guido didn't tend to smoke in front of him, but he always tasted of cigarettes. He returned the kiss, tasting that hot mouth, loving the feeling of the strong fingers in his hair. They kissed for a long time, the dogs milling about them, trying to jump up and push between them, being totally ignored.

When they broke apart Illya asked, 'Am I too intense?'

Guido laughed a bright, loud laugh. 'You ask me such a thing after a kiss like that? Of course you are, Illyetto. If you weren't, would I love you like I do? You are a blue flame burning through me. This is good. This is not a bad thing, no?'

He caressed the back of Illya's head, lifting his hair through his fingers and letting it fall. Then he went to the sideboard and poured out two little drinks.

'_Un momento_,' he said, and he called the little flock of dogs through into the kitchen. Illya heard him talking to each one as he doled out dog food into little dishes.

'They have had no walk today,' he told Illya when he came back. 'No chance at all. Such a long day at work, and then I stepped into the bar, and that's where I found you. Do you want to walk the dogs with me?'

Illya laughed, and said honestly, 'It wouldn't be my first choice. Not in this weather.'

Guido said sorrowful things to the dogs in Italian, but he left the leashes hanging where they were on the wall, and put a record on the record player. Illya picked up the sleeve and saw it was John Coltrane.

'This is what you were wanting,' he told Illya as he dropped the needle into the groove. 'Do you know, _piccolo_, I've wept over this man? I stood outside the church and just watched when they went in for the service. I used to give inoculations to his dog, and I never told him how I loved his music. Such regrets. But what can one do?'

'Ah,' Illya said.

It was only a year since Coltrane had succumbed to cancer of some kind. He couldn't remember what. He would well imagine Guido standing in the street, weeping, on the outside of the man's funeral. He didn't think too much about the recent death. He just listened to the music.

Guido linked his fingers into Illya's, and said, 'Dance, _caro mio._'

Illya rested his head on Gui's shoulder as they moved slowly about the room. It wasn't the best music to dance to, but somehow it worked. The dogs were busy eating. He stood there swaying, inhaling all those mixed scents; the alcohol and cigarettes, the smell of dog, the scent of medicines and hair product. He felt the close press and support of Gui's body. He tried to remember if he had been aware of Coltrane's funeral at the time. Quite possibly he had been out of the country. He so often was. It had been the July, he thought. He had spent a lot of time abroad in July. There had been a week in Tunisia, sweltering. He and Napoleon had taken a tiny little room in Sousse and they had been so busy with the mission there had hardly been time to stop. When they had got back to the room at night they had fallen into bed and tried to sleep with a clattering electric fan blowing warm air over the bed. It had been too hot for anything else.

Yes, he thought too much. He brought himself back to here and now. The music was still filling the room and Guido's arms were about him, and they pulled apart enough to kiss. It didn't take long before he was teasing at Gui's shirt buttons and Gui was unbuckling Illya's holster and setting aside his gun, and then there was a trail of clothing leading from the sitting room into the bedroom. The door was shut against the whining dogs, and they fell onto the little queen-size bed, kissing, skin on skin, the music still pushing through from the other room.

Guido was always tender in his lovemaking. He was always considerate. He was like Napoleon… That gave Illya a moment of thought. Napoleon didn't know where he had gone, but he hadn't called his communicator, either. They tended to give each other space for a while, at times like this. Probably Napoleon was off somewhere with a girl, doing almost exactly this.

Guido smelt so good. God. Illya bent down over him, kissing his bare chest, licking the hard nub of a nipple. He could feel the heat of Guido's cock against his thigh. The Italian's hands were everywhere, stroking down his back, cupping the muscles of his behind and squeezing, ruffling through his hair. Their cocks touched, and it was like lightning through his body. He leant his neck down and kissed Gui hard, letting out a little moan as the man's thigh moved to press firmly against his cock. At this rate he would be coming before they had got anywhere.

'Can I fuck you?' he asked Guido directly.

They didn't have a set pattern, any kind of stereotyped pattern of top and bottom. Just whose ever need was greatest.

'_Caro mio_, I would be delighted,' Gui replied breathlessly, and his eyes flicked towards the night stand.

Illya picked up the little tub of cream and used it, slicking it down the heat of his own erection. Guido lifted his knees and Illya knocked his legs apart and took one finger, glistening with cream, to touch the dark pucker between his buttocks. He slipped his finger in, and Guido moaned. He scissored his fingers in that heat, and watched his lover writhe. The way he bit his bottom lip into his mouth pushed Illya over the edge. He withdrew his fingers and put the tip of his cock to that opening. He pressed himself inside, moaning aloud at the feeling of that tightness around him. God, it was so good. It was so fucking good. He bent down over Gui and kissed him, took his cock in his greased fingers, stroked its hardness. He pushed again and again into that receptive warmth, all his straying thoughts narrowing down to one thing. Everything was feeling, heat, compression, that building need in his balls. He came with a bellow, everything exploding in a white haze.

He came back into the world slowly. His hand was wet with Gui's come. His cock was still inside Gui's body, still in that tight heat. He could feel the pulse of someone's blood through it; his or Gui's. He didn't know. He was lying over him, sweat slicking between their skin. Gui was panting and murmuring something in Italian that Illya didn't bother to parse. He wasn't thinking in Italian or English or even Russian. He was barely thinking at all. He just lay there, satiated.

'You feel better now, _piccolo_?' Guido asked him after a while.

His cock was small again, out of Guido's body. They were still wet with sweat, and the sheet was patched with damp. He had slid off the top of the Italian and was lying alongside him, not as close as he would be with Napoleon, but close enough. Their heads were close and their breath intermingled.

He moved his head forward and kissed Guido's soft lips. He thought of roses at the height of their bloom. Outside the room, a dog whined and scratched at the door. Somewhere out there, he could hear his communicator, beeping insistently. He ignored it.

'Should you not get that?' Gui asked, and Illya said, 'No.'

'It could be your Napoleone, no?'

'It could be,' Illya said.

Gui stroked a finger down his cheek. 'Is it so bad between you two?'

Illya laughed. Here he was lying in another man's bed, his hand greasy with cream and wet with come, his cock limp and wet and small after coming inside that other man. Here he was, utterly naked alongside this charming Italian veterinarian, breathing his air, his lips so close to that other man's lips because they had been kissing like old lovers, because they _were_ old lovers.

'No, no,' Guido said, reading his mind. It was disturbing how easily this man saw into his mind. 'You are here with me, yes, but that means nothing. That does not mean you don't love your Napoleone. It means you had a fight. A little – how do they say it here? A tiffin?'

'A tiff,' Illya corrected him, wiping his hand on the sheet. 'Tiffin is a – well, it's a kind of cake, I suppose.'

'A tiff, then,' Guido nodded. 'Just a little tiff. Who do you go home to at night, every day after work?'

'My work isn't exactly like that,' Illya said, but it was true. When he did have the chance to go home at night, it was almost always to Napoleon.

'What is it that this man said to you?' Gui asked. 'What did he do?'

Illya was silent. Suddenly he felt very silly. It wasn't the words so much. It was all the memories that they stirred up, memories of the life of an outsider.

'Come on, _tesoro_,' Gui cajoled him. 'Can it be so bad?'

'No,' Illya murmured. 'No. It just – stung. What he said just stung.'

'Well, a sting is something a man may get over in a night,' Guido said rationally.

He stroked his fingers on Illya's face, then got up off the bed. The length of Illya's side suddenly felt cold. He watched Guido walk naked across the room to the door. His figure was astonishingly good for a veterinarian. He went through the door and came back with their glasses of before, both filled to the brim. He shut the dogs out again as he came through.

'There,' he said, handing Illya his drink.

Illya sat up against the pillows and pulled the sheet up to cover his body, and sipped. The spirit warmed the insides of him. Outside, hail was making metallic little pinks against the glass of the window.

'What did he say about my _tesoro_?' Guido asked in a soft, sympathetic tone.

The mattress depressed as he got back into bed alongside Illya. His thigh pressed against Illya's thigh.

'Not much,' Illya admitted. 'Nothing, really. Just that he thought I was – a little too intense.'

Guido's laugh was like bells. 'Illyetto, you are a little too intense! Isn't that the thing that we all love about you? Is that not what makes you a jewel among men?'

Illya heard his communicator sounding again. He didn't have to answer it. He wasn't on duty or on call tonight. His time was supposed to be his own. Still, he should probably call into HQ at some point just to let them know he was safe. Guido saw his glance towards the door, and said, 'Go answer it, Illya. Let him know you're all right.'

He felt a spike of rebellion rising in him. Being told to call Napoleon made him feel so much more like not calling. But he did need to let HQ know he was all right, otherwise he risked a team tracing his location and breaking in here in a misguided rescue attempt. Guido didn't deserve that.

He put his glass down and went through to get his communicator. It had stopped beeping. His jacket was lying half over the arm of the sofa, the sleeve covered in white dog hair. He took the communicator from the pocket and uncapped it and put a call through to headquarters.

'Oh, Mr Kuryakin, Mr Solo has been asking all around the place for you!' the woman who answered told him, and he cut over her curtly, 'I'm fine, Janice. It's my evening off. Won't you have them call the dogs off? I'll be in in the morning.'

He barely waited for her answer before shutting the device and slipping it back into the pocket of his discarded jacket. He saw shirt, tie, underwear and trousers strewn over the floor, and he picked them up to take them back into the bedroom where they would be mostly safe from dog hair. He picked up his holster and gun and brought those through too. He shouldn't have left the gun out of his sight.

'Ah, do you know how desirable that makes you look?' Guido asked as he came back through. 'Would you put that holster on for me? The holster and gun and nothing else?'

Illya laughed. 'I would look as ridiculous as a naked man in socks.'

Guido cocked his head on one side and regarded him with a sultry look.

'Perhaps you should try it, _amore mio_.'

Illya tried it, and they didn't get to sleep for a long time.

((O))

He borrowed Guido's razor and toothbrush in the morning. They ate together either side of a little table in the kitchen, and kissed when they parted, but Illya knew he wouldn't be coming back this evening. He might not see Guido again for weeks, probably months. At some point last night in the small, thin hours, he had thought recklessly about calling in a week's leave, grabbing his passport, and persuading Gui to just step on a plane. They could go to Rome or Venice or Milan, or maybe as far south as Sicily to get some warmth and light.

He was glad he hadn't done it. He liked Guido a lot. He had a lot of tender feeling for him. But to do that would have been catastrophic for his relationship with Napoleon.

He walked into the office rubbing his eyes, sipping from the cup of black coffee he'd grabbed from the commissary on his way upstairs. He hadn't got a lot of sleep last night. He _had_ felt ridiculous wearing just that holster, and he had insisted on removing the gun, for safety, but the things it had made Gui do had kept him awake for a long time.

'Ah,' Napoleon said as he put his coffee down on his desk.

He hadn't seen Napoleon at his own desk until he spoke. He looked fresh, of course, perfectly clean, wearing a beautifully tailored suit. Illya was very aware of the crumpled nature of his own suit, of the smell of cigarettes and alcohol in the cloth, of the fact that he looked like he'd slept for about three hours last night – because that was precisely how long he had slept for. At least he was clean and shaven, though. At least he had showered.

'Good morning,' Illya told him, leafing through the papers on his desk that some early-bird secretary had left.

There was a thick silence. The air was filled with the scent of coffee, but the stale cigarette smell from his suit was strong through that. He wished he'd been able to go home and change. He hadn't wanted to go home. He'd wanted to meet Napoleon on neutral ground.

'Illya, did I say something to you yesterday that made you walk out at home-time without so much as a word, and then ignore my calls all night?' Napoleon asked, asperity edging his voice.

Illya almost laughed. How ridiculous this was. Napoleon didn't even know what he had said. It was that unimportant to him. He had no idea of what he had said. He didn't laugh, though. He looked up at Napoleon through his reading glasses, his mind stuttering, unable to think of what to say.

Napoleon huffed at his silence. He picked something up from his own desk, shoved it into a drawer in the filing cabinet, and pushed the drawer shut. He didn't slam it. Napoleon didn't slam things. But Illya knew that if he had been another man, he would have slammed it.

'You could have been dead in the gutter,' Napoleon said after another long silence, his voice crisp and very controlled.

That one was easy to reply to.

'I called in,' Illya said. 'I told them I was safe.'

'At eleven o'clock at night, five hours after you left work,' Napoleon pointed out. 'It only takes a few seconds to die, Illya.'

Illya was silent. Why was it so hard to say _I'm sorry_? The words felt like something solid in his throat, too large to bring up. He should have let Napoleon know where he was. He should have let Napoleon know, not the woman on comms, and he should have done it far earlier than he had.

'Yes,' he said eventually. 'I should have called in. I didn't.'

'What did I say, Illya?' Napoleon asked again. 'You at least owe me that. You're not a girl. I don't expect you to come out with, _if you don't know, I'm not telling you_. We don't play games like that.'

That stung almost as much as the words that had caused Illya to walk away.

'You said that I was too intense,' he said very coolly after a while.

Napoleon looked staggered.

'Oh,' he said. He looked down at his desk and pushed the papers around with his fingertip. 'Oh,' he said again, rather more softly. 'Yes, I did,' he said. 'But you are. Illya, sometimes being with you is like being in the path of a blowtorch. I'm sorry I snapped. I didn't expect you to run out in hysterics, though.'

Illya felt the tightening of anger. 'I did not run out in hysterics,' he replied. 'I left work at the end of my shift.'

'Without saying a word to me. And stayed out all night,' Napoleon reminded him. 'In your book, that's running out in hysterics.'

He came over to where Illya stood, looking at his clothes. He inhaled their scent.

'Jazz club, I guess,' he said. 'You drank a little. Not too much. You didn't like the food.'

'That's hardly deduction,' Illya said drily. 'You know where I go, and what I think about it.'

Napoleon smiled then, a bitter little smile. 'Bad pianist. Sometimes the music's good but the pianist could be better. You wish they didn't slather things in mustard. You don't like the beer but the scotch is okay.'

'If you knew where I was, why were you worried about me?' Illya asked.

'I guessed where you were. I didn't know. You could have been dead in the gutter.'

Napoleon fingered the sleeve of his jacket. There were still dog hairs on it.

'I guess I don't need to ask where you spent the night, either. How is Signore Panzini?'

There was no point in trying to deflect Napoleon. No point at all.

'He's fine,' Illya said, but he couldn't quite meet Napoleon's eyes. 'He sends his best regards.'

'For god's sake, Illya,' Napoleon said suddenly, tersely.

'Well, didn't you spend the night with anyone?' Illya asked then. 'A cute new girl from the typing pool? A divorcee from a bar somewhere?'

'I spent the night worrying about you,' Napoleon said in a low, flat voice.

That tugged at something in Illya. Suddenly he felt a softness that hadn't been there since last night.

'I was all right,' he said quietly. He lifted his hand towards Napoleon's cheek. He couldn't quite make himself touch him, but then he saw the corresponding softness in Napoleon's eyes, and he laid his palm briefly on his cheek. 'I'm sorry. But I was all right.'

Napoleon took his hand, squeezed it for a moment, then let it go.

'I said you were too intense?' he asked. 'That was really what upset you?'

'Yes,' Illya said simply. 'Yes, that is what upset me. Because I – ' He huffed out breath. 'Napoleon, I spend a lot of time trying to mould myself into society. I don't think people realise how hard that is. I hope that in front of you, at least, I can be myself.'

'Illya, you can _always_ be yourself in front of me,' Napoleon promised him.

'No,' Illya said hotly, the sense of injustice rising again. 'No, I can't, can I? Because I'm too intense. Because I think too much. Because you want me to hit the targets that you hit so easily. Be more romantic. Be less intense. Be less distracted. Keep one ear open when I'm reading just in case you try to talk to me. Fuss less about keeping our records in order on the shelves. Talk more easily to strangers. I can't _do_ that, Napoleon. I spend every day trying to pass as a man just like everyone else, but I'm not. I can't do it in front of you too. It's too hard.'

'God,' Napoleon said.

Suddenly he was folding Illya in his arms and holding him. He didn't try to kiss him. He just held him.

'I'm sorry, Illya,' he said, holding him tightly, rocking him just a little in his arms as if he needed to reassure himself that he was real. 'Really. Just – sometimes it's hard from the outside too, you know? It can scorch you, standing in the path of a blowtorch. It's not always easy living with a borderline genius.'

Illya snuffled a laugh into the side of Napoleon's neck. He had missed the scent of him. He hadn't realised how he had missed his scent for that one short night. He was clean, and so achingly familiar. He could smell Napoleon's soap on his neck.

'Is that what I am?' he asked. 'Is that my problem?'

'I don't know, Illya,' Napoleon sighed. 'You are who you are. That's all. It's not a problem. I shouldn't have said what I said, not how I said it. It was just – one of those moments. I felt a little overwhelmed with everything I'd been doing that day, we'd been stuck in the office with hardly a break covering some pretty awful things, and I just felt – I don't know. Pressured, I suppose. It just felt a bit much.'

'Yes,' Illya murmured.

It had been a hard day. They'd had to write report after report into an affair where one agent and two innocents had died, all female. It had been very hard to go through. Perhaps they were both still reeling from that, from the mission, and from the reports. It hadn't been a good time to talk about personal things.

'I don't want you to be anyone but you,' Napoleon told him, drawing back out of the hug, his eyes dark with seriousness. He kept his hands on Illya's arms, holding him lightly. 'We may rub on one another every now and then, but I don't want you to be anyone but you, I promise. I know I'm irritating as hell to you sometimes. It's just part of a relationship, isn't it?'

Illya sighed. 'It is,' he said. 'I know it is.'

Napoleon's forehead crinkled a little. 'Then I _am_ irritating as hell?'

Illya snorted. 'Of course you are, Napoleon. You know you are. But then, I'm a blowtorch, apparently.'

'It really bothered you?' Napoleon asked him seriously.

Illya sighed again. 'Yes, Napoleon, it really bothered me,' he said. 'It touched a nerve, I suppose. I thought I could relax with you and just be myself. I thought I'd finally found that place where I didn't have to pretend. People have been saying that kind of thing to me all my life. I've always ended up on the outside. The one at school who studied too hard, who didn't know how to talk to girls.'

'Well, you know why _that_ is, don't you?' Napoleon said suggestively, looking down at his own very masculine body.

Illya tutted.

'Napoleon, be serious, please,' he said, and Napoleon schooled his face back into a sober expression. 'Girls, boys. Whatever a person has between their legs, I never know how to talk to them if I feel something for them. I would be teased endlessly for my glasses, for my stacks of books, for stuttering and turning red when I tried to speak to the – '

He cleared his throat, thinking of trying to speak to the most good-looking boy in school. For some reason, even in front of Napoleon, he didn't want to admit he had had crushes on boys in school as well as on girls.

'When I tried to speak to the popular kids,' he carried on. 'When I – liked someone. At home mama would get to a point sometimes when she would just snap and ask me to stop asking her questions. Tato would give me a book after a while and tell me to go to the bedroom and find my answers there. In university I would go out with friends, but also I would be ribbed for staying back and studying, for saying the wrong things, for floundering when people spoke to me. It has taken a long time to get to where I am today. When you said that, it touched a nerve, something that's never really healed. I just – I want to have _one_ place, one person, where I can be who I am without putting on a mask.'

Napoleon put a hand on his face. He held his palm still against Illya's cheek for a moment, then stroked his fingertips very softly across his skin.

'I don't want you to wear a mask, Illya. I don't. Your intensity is – It can be _hard_ sometimes, but I don't want you to wear a mask. Just bear with me when I'm human, can't you?'

Illya smiled a small smile that just lifted the corners of his mouth. 'We're both human,' he said. 'If you can bear with me, I can bear with you.'

Napoleon leant closer and kissed the bridge of Illya's reading glasses. Then he kissed his forehead, very gently and lightly. The place where his lips had touched seemed to resonate after Napoleon had stepped away. He thought of last night with Gui, then of all the soft little kisses that Napoleon bestowed on him, all the tender touches, the little moments of secret affection that he shared when no one was looking. He wouldn't exchange that for anything.

'Illya, can I take you out to dinner?' Napoleon asked. 'That place in the Bowery, where I can hold your hand over the table and kiss you if I like, where no one will bat an eyelid because we're the least queer guys in the whole place? I want to eat with you and step up onto the dance floor afterwards, and kiss you in front of everyone. Will you let me take you out and spoil you rotten and then take you home and make it all up to you?'

'All right, Napoleon,' Illya said.

It was in Napoleon's nature to think of romantic ways to woo him, and it was nice to acquiesce. Napoleon didn't feminise him. He just lavished his attention on him in the way he lavished attention on sexual partners of any gender. Napoleon didn't discriminate.

'And will you talk to me, next time?' Napoleon asked. 'Please, just talk to me, instead of running out on me and shacking up with that Italian lothario.'

A little voice in Illya's head wanted to rear up and protest that Guido was so far from a lothario as to make the name laughable, but he reined that need in. Sometimes he managed to rein those thoughts in before they reached his mouth. It would be best, now, not to mention Gui's name at all.

'I will try,' he promised. 'I will do my best.'

Napoleon kissed him. He slipped his fingers behind Illya's head and cradled his skull, and leant in and kissed him. His lips were soft and his mouth tasted of coffee. It was such a warm, familiar thing, like coming home after a hard mission and sinking into his favourite chair. It was such a hot thing, and it sent arrows straight down from his mouth to his groin. He kissed Napoleon back, and for a little while the kissing was all he could think of.


End file.
